


The Zarrow Shuffle

by Butterfly



Series: Scenes from a Resurrection Story [3]
Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: Gen, there are some implied pairings but only the canon stuff, this is a full-on resurrection story at this point
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-29
Updated: 2019-04-29
Packaged: 2020-02-09 15:41:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,080
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18641089
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Butterfly/pseuds/Butterfly
Summary: Julia learns a card trick.





	The Zarrow Shuffle

**Author's Note:**

> Still major content warnings for talking about suicide and depression, though more elliptically than before, because of the PoV character.

There hadn't even been a body.

It was a silly thing to still be stuck on, weeks after he'd died, but she couldn't shake it. Nothing to bury, nothing to burn, so they'd had to come up with stupid random objects that _represented_ their feelings for Q, as if anything could possibly mean enough...

He hadn't been fast enough, Penny had said, apologized.

But Alice's face had twisted up at the words and Julia...

When they were both fourteen, Q had confessed a secret to her under the covers. That sometimes he thought about going to sleep and never waking up. The world was too loud and too big and too much, and he sometimes just wanted it to _stop_. She hadn't known what to say, so she'd reached over to the bedside table and turned on the little dinosaur lamp that Q hadn't gotten rid of yet, and she'd taken out her worn paperback copy of _The World in the Walls_ , and she'd stayed up half the night reading out loud, Q's eyes not quite meeting hers the whole time as she whispered the familiar words to him.

_I'm too tired to care anymore._

He'd said that to the monster... months ago now. And she'd seen it in him, that soft little 'please, make the world stop being too much' but it had been too much for her too, and she'd put it away. She'd set it aside and waited for Q to come to her, waited for him to be ready to talk. Waited too damn long.

And now there wasn't even a fucking body to bury.

She stubbed out her cigarette against the ground, and just huddled there for a while, staring at embers of the bonfire. She'd _known_ that something was bothering him, something deeper, something related to why he never wanted to talk about the monster or Eliot or where his head was at, but she'd let him brush her off. She'd figured they'd have time later, when there wasn't a crisis. When she wasn't torn between two paths. When everything wasn't so awful. Then, she'd thought, _then_ she would have time to sit down with Q and figure out what was wrong.

Julia heard the soft sound of Penny arriving and she sighed, heavily. She couldn't do this. Not now.

“I need some more alone time, okay?” Julia wrapped her arms around her legs and pressed her chin down against the tops of her knees. “Give me another couple of hours, then you can wake me up.”

“This is what you dream about?” Penny's voice was as quiet as hers, and she shivered a little as he sat next to her, though there wasn't any real wind here.

“Look, I know that you and Q... you weren't friends,” Julia said, weary and chilled to the bone. “And I promise that when I'm awake, I'll practice magic and remember how to be a real person, but I really wish you'd leave right now and just let me hate myself in peace for a few more hours. Just... just a few more hours.”

“Hate yourself? You couldn't have done anything to save him, even if you'd been there. You know that, right?”

Julia let out a bitter laugh. “Yeah. But I could have fucking said something earlier. Maybe it wouldn't have been enough, I don't know, but I didn't... fuck, Penny, I was so fucking concerned about my stupid goddamn choice that I didn't even get to fucking _make_ and I just. I just pushed away my worries about Q into the future. Until I was a goddess or a human instead of some strange in-between thing.”

“Look, Julia-”

“Please, don't apologize again,” she said. “If you keep apologizing, I might start blaming you. And it's not... I know it's not my fucking fault and it's not your fault or Alice's or- or- or anything except bad fucking timing because Q having moments like that is a _thing_ and we _deal with it_ but now- now I've got nothing except a whole fucking life where my best friend is never gonna be there again, so just. Just let me be sad about it. Don't try to make it better."

“Julia, I'm not... I'm not your Penny.”

For the first time since he'd arrived, she looked over. The suit, the solemn look that didn't have that glint of yearning that was always there under everything else... “Oh.” She wiped at her face. “I didn't- I didn't mean to lay all that shit on you, then. Sorry.”

“You don't need to apologize either,” he said. “I've got a message. From Quentin.”

Julia shook her head. “But he's gone.”

“Yeah, he's in the Underworld-”

“ _No_ , he isn't,” Julia said, standing up and staring down at Penny. “That's a goddamn lie. We tried to reach him. Half of us are missing our pinky toes from- he's _not_ there. He's gone.”

“He was being shielded,” Penny said. “By, uh. By Hades.”

“You're shitting me, right? If this is some sick joke-”

“I promise, it's not a joke.” Penny got up, and she recognized that look all right – guilt.

“Alice thought- she thought that the Seam had... had eaten his shade, his mind, his... soul.” Julia's eyes burned and she scrubbed at them with the back of her hand. “He's just... he's in the Underworld? He's not destroyed?” They could save him. “I have to- I have to tell everyone. Is he- is he okay? I mean, apart from. Apart from that, is he okay?”

“He's pretty angry.”

“Oh. That's great news, actually,” Julia said. “We- is it safe for us to talk like this? If your boss is the one who tried to make us think Q was gone for good?”

“Things are still pretty chaotic, after what the monsters did,” Penny said. “I've got some distractions in place. Everyone else still thinks he's at his final destination. No one's ever come back through the last door before.”

“That sounds like Q.” Julia nodded, firmly. “Okay, okay. We need to talk about some practicalities. Then I'll wake up and get things started over here.” She looked down at the embers and saw the cards again, unburnt and humming with magic.

She grinned fiercely, and started making plans with Penny.

The next morning, Julia opened her eyes and let out a giggle that might have embarrassed her if it were about anything else. She grabbed her pillow and hugged it tightly, pressing her face against the fabric and smothering her relieved laughter. She felt almost light-headed, almost dizzy. She looked over and there on her nightstand, where it hadn't been before she'd woken up, was the deck of playing cards.

It took time to gather everyone back together again in the apartment. Alice off with the Library, Kady with the hedges, Margo and Eliot pulled away from Fillory, and every one of them bursting with news.

“Three hundred years?” Alice asked, as she hovered near the couch, not quite sitting down with Eliot and Margo. “And Josh is...”

“Probably dead, along with my wife,” Eliot said with a careless wave, shifting his leg again. He was still wearing all black, and it made him stand out like a raven against Margo's bright colors and Alice's pastels. “Twenty-Three whisked us away before we had a chance to properly assess the situation.”

“Hopefully, this little group meeting won't take long.” Margo's voice was sharp but her eyes were soft and fixed on Eliot's face. “We don't have much in common these days and I have a kingdom to save.”

“Q isn't gone,” Julia blurted out. Everyone – _everyone_ – stared at her. “He's... he's dead, but it's not like we thought. He still exists. In the Underworld. I talked to Penny.” She glanced over at her Penny nervously. “PennyForty, I mean.”

“But we couldn't even locate him,” Alice said, her voice higher than normal. “We tried- I _know_ we did the spell correctly. I triple-checked our work.”

“Hades was hiding Q from us,” Julia said. “I guess... the gods really wanted Q to be taken off the playing field, so they hid him from our magic and encouraged him to... to move on.”

“Encouraged him _how_?” Margo asked, gripping Eliot's hand tightly. Alice had moved closer to Eliot, too, her hand landing on his shoulder. She looked like she was about to throw up. “What did those spineless dickwads do?”

“Penny... uh, Penny had him watch our memorial. So that he could see that, uh...”

“They made him believe we'd given up on him,” Alice said faintly.

“Those fucking assholes,” Kady muttered. There was a murmur of agreement. “Penny really helped them do that?”

“He didn't know the details,” Julia said, but Kady just shook her head and looked away, her mouth twisting in pain. “Anyway, he's on our side now. He's helping Q hide from everyone else down there while Q looks for a way out. He's hoping we can do some research on this end, too. Mostly, Penny says, he just wanted us to know that he's trying to come back.”

“Well, Bambi, seems as though Fillory will have to wait for the return of its long-lost exiled king,” Eliot said, in a strangled voice. “We have a more important job now. Right?”

“Yeah, of course,” Margo said, without a second of hesitation, turning away from Julia to press her hands against Eliot's face. “We'll get him back, I promise, El.” She kissed him gently and touched her forehead to his for a long, shaky moment. Then Margo seemed to remember she was in a room with other people, and it was odd, being able to _see_ that sharp, prickly armor of hers get put back on like that, as she straightened up and tossed her hair airily. “I mean, our little Q is still a king of Fillory. He has responsibilities he's put off for too long.” Then she glared at the rest of the group, as if daring them to comment.

“I can investigate what the Neitherlands Library has to say,” Alice chimed in, pushing her hair back behind her ears and giving Eliot and Margo a look that Julia had... had no idea what to make of, sad but almost satisfied? “Kady, you can check with the hedges. Julia... maybe you and Penny can see if Brakebills has anything that could help? Eliot... Margo... you could come with me. If you want?” And Julia might not know what was going on with those three, but she could spot an olive branch being held out.

Margo bit her lip and stared at Eliot, who looked down at his hands and then nodded, shakily. Then Margo turned to Alice, said, “Yeah. I mean, rulers of Fillory gotta stick together,” and then reached over and straightened Alice's necklace while Alice just... let her.

Julia exchanged glances with Kady and Penny who, thankfully, seemed just as confused as she was.

“Okay, there's one more thing,” she said, getting everyone's attention again. “We can't talk to Q. Penny thinks it might tip someone off to his location. But I did come up with something that we can use to talk to Penny, at least.” She pulled out the deck from her pocket and tipped out the cards. She divided them up between everyone, keeping the extra cards for herself.

Kady turned the Jack of Spades around in her fingers, cocking an eyebrow. “Okay, what do we do with these?”

“They're time-limited communication spells that can reach Penny in the Underworld. They only last about a minute each; any longer and we risk his bosses catching on. But we each have eight cards, so that's eight messages we can send or receive from the Underworld. If we run out, I can try making more.”

“Okay, Plan Save Our Nerd is underway,” Margo said. “So, stop talking and show us how to use these damn cards, already.”

And the room was full of chatter, people staring as she showed them the tuts and then breaking off to practice and it was... it was... she shared a tearful look with Penny. “It's almost like he's back already,” she said quietly, just for him. “We went our separate ways when we thought he was gone but now...”

“Now, we're gonna get him back. Make sure he knows he's got people on his side?”

“Make sure he remembers he has a family,” Julia said, firmly. “And that we'll fight for him.”

 

**Author's Note:**

> The Zarrow shuffle is a false shuffle invented by Herb Zarrow, where the magician pretends to be shuffling the deck but leaves the cards in their original order.


End file.
